the TallyCast archive

When I saw on my walk.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a note from a listener to my technology podcast. Lynn wrote:

"I'm a listener to Radio MacGuys and a big fan of the TV show LOST. In several episodes of LOST, Tallahassee has been mentioned. I know you live there from listening to your podcast. Do you have any ideas why the LOST writers are picking on your city?"

Two of the characters in the show (Sawyer and Kate) mention connections to Tallahassee. Sawyer is a nickname for a character named "James Ford." James Ford was a former mayor of Tallahassee but looks nothing like the character on Lost.



In a recent episode of the Official Lost Podcast with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (the writer/producers), they said that a future episode this season will be called "The Man From Tallahassee". This was recently confirmed in an ABC Medianet spreadsheet (requires Excel or OpenOffice). The episode will be broadcast on March 21st, 2007.



I've been watching Lost for the last few years but didn't really think much about the connection to Tallahassee until Lynn brought it to my attention. I thought about it while taking a walk in Innovation Park last week I looked up and this is what I saw:



A recurring theme through the episodes of Lost is the subject of magnetism. Meet the the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. It's located at the Florida State University in Tallahassee and has some of the biggest baddest magnets on the entire planet. Here are a few factoids that might be of interest:

• The lab consumes 56 megawatts of power; 1/10th of the entire electrical power consumption of the City of Tallahassee. The annual electric bill for the lab is $5.4 million dollars.
  
  
  
  
• The lab includes several record breaking magnets including a hybrid magnet the produces the most powerful sustained magnetic field in the world. They measure these things in something called "Telsa squared". The FSU magnet produces 45 Telsa(2) This magnet weighs 35 tons and takes 6 weeks to go from room temperature to it's operating temperature (-425 degrees F).
  
  
• The helium bill for the lab runs a cool $1 millon a year.
  
  
• The Tallahassee horology association (clocks) meets at the lab.
  
  

Magnet photo from FSU.com

You can find more photos of the mag lab on my Flickr.com site.



Another area mystery surrounds Tate's Hell swamp. According to the legend, farmer Cebe Tate went into this huge ( 147,000 acres) cypress swamp to hunt a panther. He entered the swamp near Sumatra Florida (Liberty County) armed with a "long tom" shotgun and his dogs. The dogs found scent and ran toward it as Tate slogged along attempting to keep up. The dogs caught the panther but were killed and Tate realized he was lost. There are a lot of different versions of this story, but they all end with Tate coming out of the swamp near Carrabelle. When he went into the swamp, Tate was a young man. When he came out seven days later, his hair and beard were snow white. As he staggered out of the swamp, he said "My name is old Tate and I've just been in hell."



The story of Tate's Hell is told in song by the late Will Mclean. While we weren't able to obtain permission to play Will's tune on this podcast, we are including a tune by Sopchoppy banjo (and guitar and ...) hot daddy Frank Lindamood. The tune is "Worried Man Blues" by traditional. You can usually find Frank at the Florida Folk Festival.